Isn’t it a pity?

Now isn’t it a shame

Some things take so long

But how do I explain

When not too many people

Can see we’re all the same?

And because of all their tears

Their eyes can’t hope to see

The beauty that surrounds them

Isn’t it a pity?

George Harrison 1966

By Gordon the Gardener

George Harrison with these words hints that he had a strong interest in nature and his garden.

He would go looking with his wife Olivia around nurseries to seek out a particular plant for their garden at Friar Park in Oxfordshire.

George Harrison was a lifelong and enthusiastic gardener having bought the house in 1970 which he saved from demolition. He set about restoring the garden which contained a magnificent collection of somewhat neglected topiary.

George put together a group of 10 gardeners to see through the work. In effect he became one of us, a gardener.

In his autobiography ‘I Me Mine’, George dedicated “to gardeners everywhere” when he wrote: “I’m really quite simple. I don’t want to be in the business full time, because I’m a gardener.

“I plant flowers and watch them grow. I don’t go out to clubs. I don’t party. I stay at home and watch the river flow.”

The Beatles’ hit ‘Here comes the Sun’ was, in fact, written while in Eric Clapton’s garden.

George Harrison showed his love of gardening when he gifted a new site to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in 1973. Now its biggest home in the UK, the society opened a new garden at the Bhaktivedanta Manor Estate near Watford.

At the time, his widow Olivia Harrison said: “I am grateful to the devotees for honouring George in the form of a garden, he would be very proud.”

He said in an interview: “I like the garden, being there, it’s true. In the garden you see the seasons come and go and whatever you do can affect it all but at the same time the flowers don’t answer you back, they don’t give you no trouble.”

This is a sentiment I would concur with myself. I am the grower and the end results rest with me alone. True plants do not answer you back, but they have their way of telling you when they are not happy, by their growth, the lack of it or – if they are healthy – they show their gratitude with a magnificent flowering or foliage.

As the leaves fall they can be raked up onto and around your shrubberies, thus increasing the land’s fertility and – on frosty winter mornings – birds, thrushes and blackbirds in particular will happily forage for food, in the leaf litter.

 

 

Now is one of my favourite times. You can still plant tulips. A wonder of nature, tulips come in a range of out of this world colours and do everything by themselves, as all bulbs do, as the tiny flower is already formed inside the bulb.

Someone asked me last week what plant they could plant now for spring. Tulips, was my one word answer. They are the simplest and easiest plant anyone could wish for.

Tulips can still be planted and bargains are to be had now. I have planted tulips in early January which have still shown their glory in spring.

Huddersfield Irish Centre’s garden was awarded its fifth gold medal in a row in Yorkshire in Bloom, along with the best in their section. The garden was praised by judge Amanda Poulson, who said: “What a joy to find this tiny oasis of a garden in the centre of Huddersfield.

“It is packed with a plethora of annual flowers and foliage plants. The plants have been selected to suit the orientation. I was even more impressed to learn that most of these beautiful plants had been grown by one of the club members, Peter.”

Many shrubs can be pruned in winter but be careful of not pruning spring flowering shrubs like forsythia, which flower on second year growth, otherwise winter pruning will cut all the flowering wood off.

Brussels sprouts and leeks now having been frosted will have a fine taste on your Christmas dinner, after which have a look through seed merchants’ catalogues to see what you are going to sow in 2025.

This is the time when gardeners are looking forward to the coming growing season. The first week in the year is when the first sowings of seed are made.

The autumn this year provided a spectacular show of bright colours, considering the wet and cold summer we had.

It seems strange to say but there will be many people who did not see the beauty that surrounds them. Isn’t it a pity?

Catch up on Gordon’s previous blogs HERE.